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Attorneys for the Cinemark theater chain want victims of a 2012 shooting at a Colorado movie theater to pay nearly $700,000 in legal fees after they unsuccessfully sued the company.

The company's lawyers told a judge they need the money to cover the costs of preserving evidence, retrieving and copying records, travel and other expenses, according to court documents filed this month.

A judge didn't immediately rule on the request. But Colorado courts allow the winning side of a court case to recover legal fees.

Jurors in May ruled in Cinemark's favor over 28 victims and their families who argued the nation's third-largest theater chain should have done more to prevent the attack that killed 12 people and left more than 70 others injured.

They sued in state court, saying security lapses allowed for the July 20, 2012 attack at a midnight premiere of a "The Dark Night Rises," a Batman film, in Aurora, Colo.

A judge last week dismissed a similar lawsuit in federal court, saying Cinemark's lack of security was not a substantial factor in the deaths.

In both lawsuits, victims cited a lack of guards and no alarm on an emergency exit door that would have sounded when James Holmes slipped into the crowded theater and started shooting.

Cinemark argued it could not have foreseen the attack, and nothing could have stopped the heavily armed Holmes. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the state case have said they are considering appealing the verdict.

Holmes is serving a life sentence after a different group of jurors could not unanimously agree on whether he deserved to die.

My stupid iPhone game: Nesen Probe, it's rather old, annoying and pointless, but it's free.
Was free. Now it's gone. Never to be seen again.
Off to join its brother and sister apps that could not
keep up with the ever updating iOS. RIP Nesen Probe.

So Spotify recently accused Apple of "using the App Store approval process as a weapon to harm competitors". In a very public and aggressive fashion at that.

Spotify says Apple is making it harder for the streaming music company to compete by blocking a new version of its iPhone app.

In a letter sent this week to Apple’s top lawyer, Spotify says Apple is “causing grave harm to Spotify and its customers” by rejecting an update to Spotify’s iOS app.

The letter says Apple turned down a new version of the app while citing “business model rules” and demanded that Spotify use Apple’s billing system if “Spotify wants to use the app to acquire new customers and sell subscriptions.”

The letter, sent by Spotify general counsel Horacio Gutierrez to Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell on June 26, suggests that Spotify intends to use the standoff as ammunition in its fight over Apple’s rules governing subscription services that use its App store. (Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the date Spotify sent the letter.)

“This latest episode raises serious concerns under both U.S. and EU competition law,” Gutierrez wrote. “It continues a troubling pattern of behavior by Apple to exclude and diminish the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music, particularly when seen against the backdrop of Apple’s previous anticompetitive conduct aimed at Spotify … we cannot stand by as Apple uses the App Store approval process as a weapon to harm competitors.”

So this went viral all over the interwebs with most outlets simply parroting Spotify's claim that Apple rejected the latest update to their app simply because they removed the In-App Purchasing feature. Implying that Apple was forcing them to give them a cut of their subscription revenue. I figured it was BS. And Apple's formal response lays out exactly why.

Literally nothing has changed here other than Spotify's whining about their app update being rejected for blatantly trying to circumvent a long-standing App Store rule. No retailer is going to let you put your product/service on their shelves and then allow you to get paid for it outside of the store! If Spotify doesn't want Apple to get a cut of their subscription revenue that's fine. They just can't provide any mechanism to sign-up for Spotify inside the app or advertise any way to do it outside the app. Simple as that.

Perhaps. You can blame the "PC political climate" all you want. But at the end of the day Gov. LePage probably should have made sure that the state rep actually called him a racist before going off like that and then daring the man to make the VM public. He obliged him. And now the governor is looking even more like an asshat who doesn't have the temperament to hold the office than he already did.

Generally speaking I agree. I just don't know if I would characterize this particular situation as "frivolous" given the non-functioning alarm on the emergency exits.

OAW

Serves them right, bunch of greedy sue happy people who see an opportunity for free money by capitalizing on a tragedy. Im reminded of fire alarms. If a door alarm had went off no one would have known what it was, they would have just sat there with irritated looks on their faces like they do with fire alarms. It sucks to own a business these days. There's any number of infinite tragedies that can happen at a business and everyone's looking to sue for every single one.

So let me ask you this. If a fire had broken out and the fire alarms weren't functioning and people ended up dead. That would also be a tragedy. Would you feel the same way if the family members of the dead sued?

Not comparable. The theater wasn't equipped with nutjob-murderer alarms. And while there might have been fire axes behind glass, I'm confident there were no AR-15s behind glass.

Frivolous suits are a major nuisance. I think it's OK for the suers to pay something, but $25K each is excessive. That's end-of-middle-class for some of them, on top of losing a relative. But if they don't pay something, there's no disincentive to take potshots at innocent businesses either.

^^^
So let me ask you this. If a fire had broken out and the fire alarms weren't functioning and people ended up dead. That would also be a tragedy. Would you feel the same way if the family members of the dead sued?
OAW

Not unless the business intentionally started the fire. Suing for accidents should be prohibited unless extreme negligence was involved. Meeting government regulatory/safely requirements is the #1 risk in starting a business. It's hard enough for newcomers to get their foot in the door. If the fire alarms and building were built to code and signed off on by government inspectors then the business shouldn't be held accountable for not knowing that every little fuse, wire, wasn't free of defect. As a society we need to stop looking for ways to blame someone else... particularly entities perceived to be wealthy (which all businesses are)... for every unpredictable unfortunate event. It's up to you to be vigilant about your own safety, not everyone else to provide you a safety net. If people have a problem with that, if they are scared of fires, tripping on sidewalk-cracks, slipping on unshoveled snow, murderers, rapists, hot coffee - then they shouldn't patron the businesses.

It happens from time to time across Kentucky. A candidate is elected to office or someone is chosen to lead a public university. Typically, a judge and honoree stand facing each other, right hands raised. The judge recites the oath of office with its words proudly repeated.

Then comes this reference: "I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God."

California and federal regulators fined Wells Fargo a combined $185 million on Thursday, alleging the bank's employees illegally opened millions of unauthorized accounts for their customers in order to meet aggressive sales goals.

A staggering 5,300 employees at Wells Fargo were fired in connection with this behavior, according to the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.

The San Francisco-based bank will pay $100 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created five years ago; $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles. It will also pay restitution to affected customers.

It is the largest fine the CFPB has levied against a financial institution and the largest fine in the history of the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.

The CFPB said Wells Fargo sales staff opened more than 2 million bank and credit card accounts that may have not been authorized by customers. Money in customers' accounts were transferred to these new accounts without authorization. Debit cards were issued and activated, as well as PINs created, without telling customers.

In some cases, Wells Fargo employees even created fake email addresses to sign up customers for online banking services.

"Wells Fargo built an incentive-compensation program that made it possible for its employees to pursue underhanded sales practices, and it appears that the bank did not monitor the program carefully," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

The behavior was widespread, the CFPB and other regulators said, involving thousands of Wells Fargo employees.

Wells Fargo's aggressive sales tactics were first disclosed by The Los Angeles Times in an investigation in 2013. The story series prompted the Los Angeles City Attorney office to sue Wells Fargo over its tactics.

In a statement, Wells Fargo said: "We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request." Wells Fargo said they've refunded $2.6 million in fees associated with any product that was opened without authorization.

Despite the LA Times investigation, Wells Fargo is still known for having aggressive sales goals for its employees. Wells Fargo's executives highlight every quarter the bank's so-called "cross sale ratio," which is the number of products the bank sales to each of their individual customers. The ratio hovers around six, which means every customer of Wells Fargo has on average six different types of products with the bank

After hanging up mid-sentence on a caller, a Houston 911 call center operator was heard on a recording saying, "Ain't nobody got time for this. For real," according to charging documents.

That call center operator identified as Crenshanda Williams was arrested and charged after allegedly hanging up on what could be thousands of emergency callers, according to the documents.

The 43-year-old had been placed under police investigation after her supervisors noticed that she had an abnormally large number of calls that lasted less than 20 seconds.

A review of the Houston Emergency Center database found that "thousands of short calls have been attributed to the defendant" from October 2015 to March 2016.

When interviewed by Houston Police in June, Williams allegedly told officers she often hung up on calls because she did not want to talk to anyone at that time. She was charged with interference with an emergency telephone call, which is a misdemeanor.

Williams does not have an attorney listed in the court documents and did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

She's scheduled for a court appearance next week, according to CNN affiliate KPRC.

Supposition: Prison has never rehabilitated a single child molester, it only makes them worse when they're eventually released (if they survive). The cycle of abuse never ends if we heap abuse on to such offenders. It's hard to believe, that in this day and age, people still cheer for criminals to rape and kill other criminals in the name of "justice".

It's why I eventually came to the conclusion that the death penalty is barbarism, and this isn't any better (in fact, it's actually worse).

"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr

County supervisors issued a ban against clown costumes, masks or makeup worn in public during the holiday, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Effective through Nov. 1, violators will be hit with a $150 penalty fee for donning clown paraphernalia.